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Mormon Swords

Bikewer

Penultimate Amazing
Bikewer
Joined
Sep 12, 2003
Messages
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Location
St. Louis, Mo.
I just had a little blurb article show up on my Google News feed about a Mormon religious scholar lecturing about the swords mentioned in the Book of Mormon.

Seems those ancient meso-Americans that JC appeared to had a variety of steel swords and other weapons.

Unfortunately, no such artifacts have ever been known, nor any metalworking at all other than copper.

We know the Aztec had those obsidian-edged macuahuitl, and various Amerind tribes had hardwood war-clubs that had sort-of sharpened edges, but no steel.

So the good scholar, rather than assuming that perhaps the Book Of Mormon was simply wrong, decided that the technology to make steel was "lost".
Funny how that would work. In order to make steel, you need a lot of stuff... Mining operations, smelting facilities, forging facilities, all the tools that go along with all that....

Lost as well, no doubt.
 
Bikewer said:
I just had a little blurb article show up on my Google News feed about a Mormon religious scholar lecturing about the swords mentioned in the Book of Mormon.

Seems those ancient meso-Americans that JC appeared to had a variety of steel swords and other weapons.

Unfortunately, no such artifacts have ever been known, nor any metalworking at all other than copper.

We know the Aztec had those obsidian-edged macuahuitl, and various Amerind tribes had hardwood war-clubs that had sort-of sharpened edges, but no steel.

So the good scholar, rather than assuming that perhaps the Book Of Mormon was simply wrong, decided that the technology to make steel was "lost".
Funny how that would work. In order to make steel, you need a lot of stuff... Mining operations, smelting facilities, forging facilities, all the tools that go along with all that....

Lost as well, no doubt.
Click to expand...

Ken Ham uses essentially the same logic in answering the question of how Noah could have built his Ark without the technology Ham is using to build his:
By the time of the Flood, who knows what technology people may have invented?...It’s very possible that Noah had technology that would have astounded us (and we would have envied)! And for those scoffers who say that if Noah had such technology we would find evidence of it, they need to understand the sheer destructive processes of the global Flood. It essentially obliterated the pre-Flood world.
Click to expand...

IOW, Noah had the technology he needed to build the Ark to survive the Flood Ham believes in, but the evidence for the technology to build the Ark was lost in the Flood Ham believes in.

It might be interesting to see how Ham would react to the Mormon's using the same reasoning Ham uses to support his faith to support a faith Ham doesn't believe in.
 
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The usual buhleever response is, "Yeah, well, it COULDA happened! You cain't prove it dint!" Sometimes followed by a fist.

You can't argue with a knuckle sammich.
 
sackett said:
The usual buhleever response is, "Yeah, well, it COULDA happened! You cain't prove it dint!" Sometimes followed by a fist.

You can't argue with a knuckle sammich.
Click to expand...

I thought the proper reply was, "You weren't there."
 
To fully understand how unlikely it is to lose such technology, it helps if you actually understand how crappy the alternatives were. Because technology COULD be lost if you have something better (e.g., you don't find many people manufacturing matchlock guns any more) but I'd say it's rather unlikely that a technology would just be replaced by something incredibly crappier (e.g., seeing the US army just go back to smoothbore, black powder matchlocks.)

Obsidian is hyped as very sharp, and it is. It flakes to incredibly thin edges.

What you don't usually hear about it, is that it has incredibly low compression strength. It takes almost exactly an atmosphere and a half to break obsidian. Seriously. Obsidian compressive strength is around 150 kPa or 21.7 psi, while atmospheric pressure is about 101.3 kPa or 14.7 psi. You can break obsidian with your bare hands or with a compressed air can. Literally.

Even when people hype obsidian surgery because its incredible sharpness, what they're usually too... uninformed to realize is WHY we don't just give surgeons obsidian scalpels by now. The reason is that it only works on soft tissue. Hitting a bone WILL cause it to break and flake, leaving shards in the patient. You know, on account of that low compressive strength.

They're also completely useless against any kind of body armour. Yeah, that's the other aspect to why the conquistadors had no problems there. Horses and guns scaring the natives are valid reasons, but the other reason is that the weapons of those natives were completely useless against any kind of armour at all. Not only they wouldn't penetrate, but all those shards on the edge would just shatter, leaving you with a glorified wooden paddle for a weapon.

AND they lacked any kind of usable tip. Seriously, they had a rounded bit of wood as a "tip". So you couldn't even thrust at unprotected parts of the opponent. You could only try to slice, but if you hit metal, oh well, you just destroyed your edge.

It also wasn't very long (there's little evidence of any much longer than about 2.5 ft, which is about gladius hispaniensis size) and they were very heavy for this size, typically 5 to 7 pounds or so. By comparison, a steel sword of that weight would be a 6 ft long claymore or zweihänder.

So basically you have a sword that is simply too heavy and unwieldy, and unsuited for most of the finer european martial arts techniques that you'd use against armour even by its construction, even without the fragility of the edge.

Which brings us to the other point: armour.

Even if for some reason you'd discard metal swordsmithing in favour of obsidian-shards-onna-stick, there's no reason to discard metal armoursmithing, when it can stop one of those obsidian swords 100% reliably 100% of the time. A maille hauberk would be pretty much god mode against an enemy with obsidian swords.

Hell, forget steel. Even a bronze cuirass and greaves and vambraces, a la the Greek hoplites, would let one pretty much roll over the mesoamericans. So how does that get lost?

Exactly how does such an overpowered technology get discarded or forgotten?
 
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But you know what? Forget even swords. WTH happened to the bows?

American native bows tended to be flatbows, i.e., something that went out of fashion in Europe during the stone age.

Surely a lost Jewish tribe would have knowledge of the Egyptian COMPOSITE angular bows, since they're supposed to have come out of Egypt, right?

So riddle me this: how the hell does one forget how to make better bows and reverts to a stone age design?
 
Hans,

You're spoiling a perfectly good pie fight by dragging verifiable facts into the matter.
 
sackett said:
The usual buhleever response is, "Yeah, well, it COULDA happened! You cain't prove it dint!" Sometimes followed by a fist.

You can't argue with a knuckle sammich.
Click to expand...
But you can cut the hand off and let the ******* bleed out!!!:D:thumbsup::D:thumbsup::D:thumbsup:
 
Hans, generally your comments are on the money.

However, both the Inca and the Tarascans made weapons from Arsenic and Copper alloys. So they weren't as good as bronze weapons, and certainly not like steel weapons. The Aztecs had suffered one of their few crushing pre-columbian defeats at the hands of the Tarascans. One of the reasons given was due to the effectiveness of the metal axes favored by the Tarascans.
 
@crhkrebs
You are, of course, correct that some places in central and southern America were using arsenic bronze.

I would argue though that that had to do more with sheer luck than any actual technological knowledge. They simply happened to sit on top of some arsenic rich ore, which allowed copper to be work-hardened to a much harder and sharper weapon than if using copper from anywhere else. But they didn't actually know how to alloy metals on purpose, like Bronze Age civilizations in the middle east did, nor had the trade network for that.

It's also why such kingdoms' technology didn't spread around. There was no technology to spread. Either you had that super ore near you, or you couldn't make much of a metal weapon. If you weren't lucky enough to sit on top of that super-ore, no luck for you. Back to stone age with you.

Essentially the proposition the Mormons claim is that some iron agen tribe from the middle east got to America. Somehow. But then apparently they flat out forget how to use either iron or bronze. Even if I were to imagine they landed in the land of the Tarascans (although I think the Mormons imagine them landing quite a bit further north), essentially we'd still see them turn into total derps who forgot anything more advanced than copper age.

So basically, yes, you are very correct. But expanding on that, for whoever didn't put two and two together on their own, I'm still thinking that the Mormons are wrong :p
 
HansMustermann said:
@crhkrebs
You are, of course, correct that some places in central and southern America were using arsenic bronze.

I would argue though that that had to do more with sheer luck than any actual technological knowledge. They simply happened to sit on top of some arsenic rich ore, which allowed copper to be work-hardened to a much harder and sharper weapon than if using copper from anywhere else. But they didn't actually know how to alloy metals on purpose, like Bronze Age civilizations in the middle east did, nor had the trade network for that.

It's also why such kingdoms' technology didn't spread around. There was no technology to spread. Either you had that super ore near you, or you couldn't make much of a metal weapon. If you weren't lucky enough to sit on top of that super-ore, no luck for you. Back to stone age with you.

Essentially the proposition the Mormons claim is that some iron agen tribe from the middle east got to America. Somehow. But then apparently they flat out forget how to use either iron or bronze. Even if I were to imagine they landed in the land of the Tarascans (although I think the Mormons imagine them landing quite a bit further north), essentially we'd still see them turn into total derps who forgot anything more advanced than copper age.

So basically, yes, you are very correct. But expanding on that, for whoever didn't put two and two together on their own, I'm still thinking that the Mormons are wrong :p
Click to expand...

Of course they "forgot", because the alternative is too hard for believers to behold: the Book of Mormon is wrong and therefore not the word of God. Some people will go through almost any level of mental gymnastics to "validate" religious texts, ignoring any facts or counter arguments to hold onto their beliefs, and they almost always revert back to some form of the "you can't disprove it" argument when nothing else is left. This shows the real weakness of such books, however, because if they were truly divinely inspired by an omnipotent deity, why are they blatantly wrong?
 
Actually, here's a bigger question than swords: WTH happened to boat building tech? How do you go from building the giant ship in the flood story, to dugout canoes?

On the whole, I'm starting to get a mental image not unlike the ark ship from the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. So the Jews packed the most useless idiots -- the kind that not only didn't know how to hammer a metal knife, but needed instructions AGAIN to wipe their own ass; and even then it was best 2 out of 3 tries -- into thousands of dugout canoes and just sent them that-a-way.
 
Since they were allegedly growing wheat and barley, where is the pollen? It should be evident in lake sediments and lots of other places. Nothing.
 
HansMustermann said:
Actually, here's a bigger question than swords: WTH happened to boat building tech? How do you go from building the giant ship in the flood story, to dugout canoes?

On the whole, I'm starting to get a mental image not unlike the ark ship from the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. So the Jews packed the most useless idiots -- the kind that not only didn't know how to hammer a metal knife, but needed instructions AGAIN to wipe their own ass; and even then it was best 2 out of 3 tries -- into thousands of dugout canoes and just sent them that-a-way.
Click to expand...

THe Sumerian Submarine is my favorite bit of BOM technology.
 
HansMustermann said:
Essentially the proposition the Mormons claim is that some iron agen tribe from the middle east got to America. Somehow. But then apparently they flat out forget how to use either iron or bronze. Even if I were to imagine they landed in the land of the Tarascans (although I think the Mormons imagine them landing quite a bit further north), essentially we'd still see them turn into total derps who forgot anything more advanced than copper age.
Click to expand...

Having slogged through the first book or two I can tell you Nephi and his family were a bunch of grade A morons. We're talking dipsticks who Forest Gump would pity as "slow." The book depicts a bunch of wealthy farmers and shepherds skittering off with no resources or supplies and no tradesmen of any kind. At one point Nephi breaks their ONE bow, and they go hungry. Nobody in the party knows how to build a snare, trap or another bow. How did they even GET in this situation? Why didn't it occur to anyone to use some sinew from their last meal and a few branches to MAKE EXTRA BOWS??? A second year Cub Scout would be more qualified to lead those idiots than the Nit-wit Nephi. I'm not kidding, that's not hyperbole. A second year Cub scout would realize having ONE guy use the ONE bow to do ALL the hunting was kinda stupid.

The book reads like a novelization of someone playing Civilization, but deliberately crippling the AI to make the game as difficult as possible. Sam Gribley from the START of "My Side of the Mountain" would be the equivalent of the grizzled old mountain man teaching the newbies how to survive in the wild. I suspect the heads of a few of those morons would have literally exploded with shock if Sam Gribley had explained to them the basic theories of falconry. "Wait, we can TRAIN ANIMALS to HELP US HUNT???" *BOOSH*

giphy.gif

(Nephi upon leaning about hunting falcons and hunting dogs.)

When they inexplicably build a boat, they have NO navigation capabilities whatsoever. All they have to do is sail East. That's it. Keep going East, but they can't manage that without a magic orb telling them where to go. The ONLY guy on the boat who can hunt, the prophet they've seen repeatedly perform miracles, who has summoned angels to act as backup muscle on multiple occasions, end up tied to the mast so they can dance without him grousing.

This collection of idiots not knowing the basics of the metallurgy common in their area is probably the most believable thing about the Book of Mormon. It's as if Smith wanted to depict the "chosen people" as stupid as possible so his own followers could look at them and say, "Well, if God can create a nation of of THESE ********, imagine what he can do with ME!"
 
I recall seeing somewhere that early editions of the BofM described their boat as having a hole in the top to let the air in and a hole in the bottom to let the water out....
 
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